Authors: Tana French
Deasy nods. ‘OK,’ I say. ‘If we don’t get a confession, this is the stuff that’s going to make the case. So give it your best. Thanks, and see you tomorrow.’
In the second before I turn away, to get Steve so we can pretend we’re still partners while we report to the gaffer, the incident room grabs me by the gut. For that second it glows warm and steady from every corner with twenty years’ worth of might-have-beens. Every time I could have walked in there laughing with Steve, every shout of triumph when I could have held up the phone record or the DNA result we’d been waiting for, every thank-you speech I could have made at the end of a big case: all of those rise up to find me, now that they’re unreachable.
I don’t do that shite. I’ve got half a dozen excuses handy – no sleep, no food, pressure, big decision, blah blah blah – but still, that against-nature feeling prickles my skin like nettlerash. ‘Let’s go,’ I say to Steve. ‘The gaffer.’ I head out the door without waiting for him, so we won’t have to walk down the corridor together.
O’Kelly is polishing the dust off his spider plant, with one of those fiddly little cloths that people use to clean their glasses. ‘Conway. Moran,’ he says, barely glancing up. ‘Tell me you’re getting somewhere.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Looks like we are.’
‘About fucking time. Let’s hear it.’
I give him the rundown. He listens, turning the plant to the light to make sure he gets every angle. ‘Huh,’ he says, when I’m done. ‘And you’re happy enough with that.’
One sideways eye has come up to me. I say, ‘We’ll have another shot at the confession tomorrow. Don’t worry: we won’t send the file to the prosecutors till we’ve got it locked down tight.’
‘I didn’t mean are you happy enough to send the file. I mean are you happy enough that Fallon did it.’
‘Yeah,’ I say. That eye, edged wet and red where the eyelid’s starting to droop like an old man’s. I can’t read him; I can’t make myself care whether or not he’s in on Breslin’s game. ‘He did it.’ I feel Steve’s weight shift beside me, but he says nothing.
The gaffer eyes me for another long moment before he turns back to his plant. He tilts a leaf to examine it, gives one spot an extra dab. ‘I thought you were waiting for something that wasn’t circumstantial.’
Last night, I told him that, back when this case was a wild thing shooting out curls of possibility in every direction. It feels like years ago. ‘That or till we eliminated everything else. We’ve done that.’
‘You have.’
I say, ‘There’s zero reason to think that anyone other than Rory Fallon was involved.’
O’Kelly tests the point of a leaf on the pad of his thumb. ‘All right,’ he says. ‘All right.’
He looks like he’s forgotten us; I can’t tell whether we’ve been dismissed. ‘We could use another floater,’ I say. ‘I sent Reilly back to the floater pool.’
That gets the gaffer’s attention. ‘Why?’
‘He found evidence. Instead of bringing it to me, or to Moran, he took it to Breslin.’
‘Can’t have that,’ O’Kelly says. He doesn’t try to hide the long glance at Steve. ‘OK: I’ll get you another one. Keep me updated.’
He turns his shoulder to us and works his fingers delicately into the plant, pushing the leaves apart to slide the cloth right down to the base.
Steve says, in the corridor, ‘Zero reason to think anyone but Rory was involved.’
His voice still has that remote sound. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Exactly zero reason.’
‘What about Lucy’s mystery guy? The folder on Aislinn’s computer?’
‘I’m seeing Lucy tomorrow. I’ll ring Sophie about the folder first thing. If either of them gives us anything solid, then we’ll review.’ I can hear the danger signs rising in my voice. ‘But right now: zero reason. Zero.’
‘The DNA on Aislinn’s mattress.’
‘That didn’t get there on Saturday night, or it would’ve been on the sheets as well. It’s got nothing to do with our case.’
Steve has stopped moving. He’s looking off down the corridor at the window – dark sky, layered in a thick yellowish vapour of light pollution – not at me.
I say, ‘You saw Rory in there. You heard him. Don’t you fucking tell me you still have doubts.’
It takes him too long to answer. I leave him there.
I’m pulling my coat on when it hits me: Breslin made it through the entire afternoon without once trying to hint that he’s on the take.
That should be a relief, but instead it jabs like a needle under a fingernail. As far as I can see, there’s no reason why Breslin should have suddenly, in the couple of hours I was away talking to Aislinn’s exes, decided to ditch his whole ornate cunning plan. He was doing a lovely job of setting me up – a few more nudges and, if it hadn’t been for Fleas, I would have been right in position for the kill shot – and out of nowhere he dropped the whole project and wandered away. I flick back mentally through the day, my chat with McCann, the floaters’ reports, checking for anything that could have made him change course: anything that might have tipped him off that I’d sussed him, or anything that could have made him decide I wasn’t worth owning after all. There’s nothing.
The only possibility left is the one jabbing deeper: Breslin knows, somehow, that there’s no point to that shite any more. The words I’m going to say to the gaffer stink like burning hair all around me, brand my face with their growing shadow. Breslin took one look at me and knew, with those dense-packed twenty years’ worth of detective instincts, that the kill shot had already been fired. He knew I’m worthless now.
Chapter 13
All the way home I’m waiting for something, or someone: another uniform pulling me over, the lamppost guy leaping out in front of my car as I turn onto my road, Fleas sticking his head out of the darkness in my kitchen. Nothing happens. My street is a blank; as soon as I step into the house, I know it’s empty. I clear it anyway.
I’m craving sleep, a lot of it, ideally with someone armed and trustworthy outside my bedroom door, but I’m not going to bed till I know I’m wrecked enough to crash out the second I hit the sheets. There’s a whole list of stuff I’m not gonna think about tonight, but it covers so much territory and I’m so tired that my mind keeps getting mixed up and letting bits slip through. For half a second, before I pull myself up sharp, I wonder what Steve is doing.
There’s fuck-all in my fridge, and me and Fleas killed off my emergency fish fingers. I ring my ma and tell her about Sophie’s vase, which has blood spatter on it because two scumbags broke into an old woman’s gaff and punched her in the stomach till she puked blood, to which my ma says ‘Huh.’ She doesn’t bring up Aislinn and neither do I. While she smokes, I make coffee and a pile of toast, cut the green bit off an old chunk of cheese, and take the lot into the sitting room.
No wind shoving at the window tonight; it’s died down, leaving a thick, still cold. I look out into the dark and think,
Come on, motherfucker. Come and get me.
I leave the curtains wide open.
I’ve got an e-mail from Fleas.
Hiya Rach! Great to hear from you. No news here, all the gang are OK, no one doin anythin special. Kinda busy at the mo but love to meet up sometime when we both have the free time. Take care sunshine xx.
Meaning no one in his corner of the underworld is suddenly drowning his sorrows or looking twitchy or sobbing on Fleas’s shoulder about his dead girlfriend. And meaning bye, see you someday maybe.
Sophie’s team didn’t find any dating sites on Aislinn’s laptop, but they haven’t reported back on her work computer yet. I take a look at Random Google Blonde’s accounts. She’s doing well for herself: dozens of messages. About a quarter of them are dick pics, which are presumably meant to send her running for her smelling salts rather than to start off meaningful relationships, although you never know. Most of the rest are one-line nothing, guys shotgunning all the pretty girls who join up, hoping one will bite. Two of them are worth a closer look. No photos, careful wording about no strings and discretion: married guys looking for fun on the side, and looking for a girl who matches Aislinn’s specs to join them.
I’m working on my reply when something moves, in the corner of my eye. I whip around, not fast enough. A big dark shape skims away from my window before I can get a decent look.
I grab my keys and dive for the door. By the time I get it open, the road is empty.
I head for my car, forcing myself to keep the pace casual: just getting something I forgot, no biggie. My breath puffs clouds into the air, but the cold doesn’t touch me. I smell turf smoke and hear cars zipping past the top of the road and feel my leg muscles throbbing to go.
I’m pulling open the car door when the light twitches. There’s someone under the streetlamp at the top of the road: a tall guy, hovering. I slam the car door and take one step in that direction and he vanishes, into the dark around the corner, going at a fair old clip.
I’m pretty sure I’m faster than him, but Stoneybatter is good for twists and laneways, and if he knows his way around, he’s gone. Even if he doesn’t, he can just nip into a pub, turn and stare with the rest if I come bursting in; what am I gonna do about it? I need to nab him on my own turf.
I go back inside, pull the sitting-room curtains almost closed and watch the road through the crack at one side.
If I get another shot, it’ll be my last. One more close call and the guy’s gonna know for sure he’s been burned.
There isn’t a way for me to do this on my own. I run through every backup option I can think of – Fleas, Sophie, Gary, my mate Lisa, all my other mates, the neighbours. I even consider my ma. I swear to God, for a quarter of a second I consider Breslin.
I can’t do it. There’s no one, on all that list, who I can make myself ring up to say
Hi, I can’t do this, come help me.
To every single one of them, I’d be a different person after that call. The emptiness of my gaff feels dense enough to tilt it on its foundations.
The guy’s got some self-control, at least: it’s twenty-five minutes before a thicker darkness moves in the shadows outside the street-lamp’s circle. In the same second I feel my heartbeat rise to it, I realise that I’ve known all along what I’m gonna do.
The thicker darkness settles and stays. I get out my phone, I take a breath and I ring Steve.
It takes him a few rings to pick up. ‘Hi,’ he says.
‘Hi. Are you doing anything important?’
‘Not a lot.’
He leaves it there. That carefully neutral voice, while he tries to work out, or decide, whether we’re still partners.
I don’t have time for fancy dancing. ‘Steve,’ I say. ‘Listen. I need a hand.’ It feels rough in my throat, but when I glance out the window, the guy is still there, motionless at the edge of the lamplight.
There’s a long second of silence. I shut my eyes.
Then Steve says, ‘OK. What’s up?’
His voice has thawed two notches, maybe three. It’s fucking ridiculous how relieved I am, but I don’t have time to deal with that either. ‘Some fucker’s been casing my gaff for the last few days,’ I say, ‘and I’ve had enough. I can’t go out there and get him myself; he’s got a clear line of sight on every route I can take, and if he sees me coming he’ll do a legger.’
Steve says, and he’s put everything else aside to focus on this, ‘But he’s not watching for me.’
‘That’s what I’m hoping.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘At the top of my road.’ Steve knows my gaff; he’s never been inside, but we’ve swung by to pick something up once or twice. ‘He was looking in my front window earlier on, and I’ve seen him down the laneway out the back, but he mostly hangs out at the corner. Tall guy, solid build, middle-aged, dark overcoat, trilby-type hat.’
I feel Steve clock the match to the guy who went over Aislinn’s wall. ‘OK,’ he says. ‘What do you want me to do with him?’
‘Bring him in here. I want a word with him.’
‘I’ll be there in fifteen minutes, tops.’ I can hear him moving already: pulling on shoes, or getting into a coat.
‘Ring me when you’re almost at my road. Let it ring once, then hang up.’
‘Right.’ Keys jingling; Steve’s ready. ‘Mind yourself.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘See you soon.’
I put my phone in my pocket, sit back down on the sofa and click shite at random on my laptop. The window feels like fingernails drumming at the side of my head. I don’t look around. When my phone rings once, what feels like an hour later, I manage not to jump.
I stretch, stand up and wander over to the front door, out of sight of the window. I get out my gun and press my eye up against the peephole.
Darkness and the yellow door across the road, bulging insanely in the fisheye lens. The yappy little dog next door throwing a fit. Girls shrieking, somewhere far away. Then a fast jumble of footsteps coming closer, over the cobblestones.
I hold the doorknob and make myself wait till a wild flap of black rears up in the peephole. Then I whip the door open, two guys pressed close together stumble inside, and I slam the door behind them.
They trip on the rug, get their balance back and stagger to a standstill in the middle of my sitting room. Steve is gripping the other guy’s coat collar with one hand and twisting his arm up behind his back with the other. Big guy, black hair going grey – his hat’s gone missing somewhere along the way – long black overcoat. ‘Get
off
me—’